Fallout 4 release date: November 10, 2015 – details revealed at Bethesda E3 showcase

Fallout 4 is due for release on Xbox One, PS4 and PC on November 10, 2015, Bethesda has announced. The game was shown off properly at Bethesda’s E3 showcase, with a gameplay demo revealing many details of the highly anticipated game.

Bethesda’s Todd Howard revealed that Fallout 4 has been in development since 2009, with devs hard at work for the last four years.

While Bethesda said it wouldn’t be revealing much on the game’s story, Fallout 4 begins before a nuclear war, with the player then emerging 200 years later as the sole survivor of vault 111. The character creation screen allows you to choose a man or woman and lets you sculpt your face while chatting to your partner – a baby is generated from the couple you create and you can set up your character stats after a visit from a vault tech. Around 1000 names have been included for your robot to say.

Player freedom was said to be the dev’s No. 1 goal, with players able to go and do what they want. Fallout 4 is being created in a next-generation version the Creation Engine, offering numerous graphical advancements over previous Bethesda open-world experiences. Your player’s dog can be given commands by contextually pointing at places in the game world.

A new version of Pit Boy featured in the game allows you to play classic games as well as access in-game information and systems, and a second-screen app will allow you to use it as if it were really attached to your arm – if you strap it to yourself or mount it in the replica Pit Boy included in the Collector’s Edition.

You character can rebuild the world while playing, thanks to a real-time construction tool. Scrap items in the world for materials to build the way you want. The demo showed off the player building and decorating to make a new home for himself and his best friend – dog. As your settlement grows traders will arrive which have some of the best items in the game.

Generators will power things, connected with cables. Terminals can control how items are powered, such as turrets. Settlements can and will get attacked by raiders so defence is important. It’s all entirely optional but makes the world feel more real.

Crafting even carries over to weapon building. Components are found in all items in the world. All items now have purpose. 50 base weapons and over 700 mods for those weapons. You could, Bethesda claims, take a laser pistol and mod it into something completely new. You can even mod your own power armour.

Bethesda has focused on making the combat feel great, in first or third-person, as well as allowing players to use VATs to slow down time and choose targets.

Fallout 4 is due for release on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

Update: Bethesda hasn’t released all the new Fallout 4 videos, but you can seem them all by skipping to around 1h5m40s in the full conference below.